This wine sellers web site is relatively quick to load and offers a simple design and layout on initial view. The business acts as a distributor of wines from the Margaret Rvier region in
One thing I do like is frames (a personal choice) because it offers easy display of information and distinct areas to navigate. The simple blue and white colour scheme is a little dull,but it works regardless (of personal opinion).
The Home Page feels little over-crowded with links – so many links! It’s hard to decide where to move first. In addition, there are 12 tables of which all offer information that can be accessed within other pages of the web site. I’d prefer to see the Home page simple, clean and display only the basic information about what Margaret River Wines offer. The user can then make their own decision as to where they to go from here.
Once off the home page, the layout remains (which is nice) however the alginment shifts from Left to Centre alignment, it takes a moment to adjust. All pages apart form the home page are like this. Additionally, all the left-hand side links are custom built images and therefore do not change colour once the user has visited each page. The links are all display which adds to the endless scrolling required within this website, so I’d like to see the main headers offer a drop down menu option to reduce the length of each page – even shift the left-hand navigation to the top of the page in a static manner across the site.
There is quite an extensive list of wines and produce available for sale via the Shop menu option. Here, the site layout changes (which is confusing) – where did the left-hand side navigation go? However, a search finction is introduced, although this should be available on all pages in a static frame. Additionally, there are no images to view products for sale. Using thumbail photos that can be enlarged which clicked (Taubb, 2006) would enhance a shopping experience and probably encourage online sales in the long run.
Again, this web site does not use easy navigational gadets like breadcrumbs (Krug, 2006) to easily find where you are in the multitude of pages on offer here. I cannot quickly decipher where I have been or even where I would like to move to from any one page in the web site which makes for a confusing browsing experience here.
A simplified and less ‘busy’ layout would benefit my attention span to this web site and would more than likely encourage me to stay on the site longer than the few minutes I initially spent trying to find my way around.
Overall, not a great experience and I probably wouldn’t revisit the site, let alone purchase my Margaret River Wines from the centre.
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